Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-73).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this study was to examine the claim that 70 to 90% of youth ministry participants abandon the church after high school graduation. Chapter 1 examines the current statistics related to the church retention of young adults. The research questions used to guide the study are introduced. In order to accomplish the goal of the study, Shields' Youth Ministry Retention Questionnaire (YMRQ) was used to compare the youth ministry commitment of Christian high school graduates with their current levels of church involvement. Chapter 2 reviews the critical literature to this study. The issues of the role of church and the calling for Christians to be together, understanding who is defined as a young adult, and Protestant schooling in America are explored. Chapter 3 describes the process by which the data for this study was gathered. Graduates from the four types of Christian high schools (covenantal independent, covenantal church-related, open-admission independent, and open-admission church-related) were invited to participate in the YMRQ survey. All of the respondents were graduates of ACSI member schools. Chapter 4 reports the analysis of the data from the completed surveys. The data was analyzed using Chi-Square tests and ANOVA tests to determine the statistical significance between the two variables. For all levels of youth ministry commitment, these young adults maintained a low to high level of involvement with a church after graduating high school. Bridging the language of statistics and the language of the practice of youth ministry, a clearer retention rate of Christian school graduates is 82.9%. This percentage represents those students in the moderate and high levels of church engagement as young adults. The final chapter presents the conclusions based on the findings of this study. Any variances in the data and the reasons for their existence are also explored. Based on the results of the research, applications are made for Christian schooling and local church youth ministry.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, April 2007.

Canadians’ religious involvement has declined significantly over the last thirty years (Bibby 2004a), but explanations haven’t successfully determined the reasons for the decline. Women’s employment rate increased significantly during the same time period, which could account for the decline, particularly as Canadians have become increasingly pragmatic about time following the rise of the dual earner family. This thesis postulates that Canadians’ pragmatism dominates religious involvement, particularly as Canadians have less time to engage in those activities and tasks they deem necessary and worthwhile. It examines the costs and benefits of religious involvement—utilizing a rational choice framework—and insists that religious groups need to respond more effectively to affiliates’ needs and desires. The data demonstrates that Canadians’ perception of worth of their religious involvement (as measured through enjoyment) better predicts involvement than association. / xiii, 131 leaves ; 29 cm.

The purpose of this study was to assess the strength of religious faith in student-athletes and non student-athletes attending a religiously-practicing and a non religiously-practicing NCAA Division III institution. Participants were recruited from two NCAA Division III institutions in the Midwest (N = 375). Specifically, participants attended either Institution A (n = 201), a religiously-practicing, or Institution B (n = 174), a non religiously-practicing, NCAA Division III institution. Each participant completed a demographic assessment and the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire.A 2 X 2 X 2 (Gender X Current Athletic Participation X Institution Attended) ANOVA was employed to determine if significant differences existed in strength of religious faith between students at the two aforementioned institutions. Students attending Institution A displayed higher strength of religious faith than students attending Institution B. Also, a significant interaction indicated non student-athletes attending Institution A reported higher strength of religious faith than students-athletes attending Institution A. In addition, student-athletes attending Institution B were not significantly different in respect to strength of religious faith when compared to non student-athletes attending Institution B. Finally, females indicated higher strength of religious faith than males. This study has provided additional evidence for the impact of religion in the lives of intercollegiate student-athletes and non student-athletes. / School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science

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This thesis considers the world of Christian faith, as expressed by a particular social group of which I have been a part since 1998, as an alternative knowledge system. Focusing upon the lives of a number of key agents, including myself, I argue that at the heart of this knowledge system is a charismatic relationship, in the Weberian sense, with a divine Other. This relationship is freely entered into, is conceived as involving movement into or towards an embodied experiential and relational knowledge of God, and is often expressed by participants through such metaphors as a ‘journey', ‘adventure' or ‘quest'. My original contribution to knowledge is in taking a sociological concept, Weber's notion of the charismatic relation, and innovatively applying this framework to the relation between humans and a transcendent or disembodied ‘Other'. My work responds to a) recent ‘ontological' challenges within anthropology to ‘take seriously' other worlds, b) invitations to those with strong religious convictions to practise anthropology without feeling that they need to lose those convictions, and c) recent debates within the anthropology of Christianity concerning how to deal with the agential characteristics of non-human/spiritual beings within ethnographic work. Through a reflexive exploration of experience, I examine how certain Christian people constitute their lives, observing how charismatic devotion to a divine Other implies both a sensorium that extends beyond the corporeal senses, as well as the ‘planting' of various conceptual seeds that, by providing concrete metaphors of what life is, shape the lives of those willing to ‘receive' them. As social actors seek to maintain ‘openness' to this divine Other, a transformational journey results, in which human perception and conception are continually open to renewal. As a reflexive ethnographic account from within such an alternative knowledge system, this thesis makes an original contribution to phenomenological and sensory studies, as well as contributing to anthropological work on Christianity.

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In 1914, James Leuba surveyed the eminent psychologists of the United States with regard to their belief in God and immortality (Leuba, 1916). In 1933, he replicated the survey (Leuba, 1934). His results affirmed, he stated, "that, in general, the greater the ability of the psychologist as a psychologist [sic], the more difficult it become [sic] for him to believe in the continuation of individual life after bodily death" (1921a, p. 279). He concluded that eminent behavioral scientists were least likely of all scientists to believe, and that psychological learning made belief in an "interventionist God... almost impossible" (1934, p. 294). He further stated, "If knowledge is, as it seems, a cause of the decline of the traditional beliefs, that decline will presumably continue as long as the increase in knowledge" (1934, p. 300). In 1958, Mayer (1959) replicated Leuba's survey. The results of the initial survey and the two replications of the survey were consistent with Leuba's hypotheses. However, no one had replicated that survey of eminent psychology scholars in almost fifty years (from 1958-2006)--until now. The current study replicated Leuba's original survey, as well as collecting additional qualitative data via questionnaires and interviews. The response rate was over 61%. Not one of the respondents expressed a belief in immortality, and only one person expressed a belief in God--and then only with this caveat: "when desperate." As a matter of fact, of all the groups that have been surveyed using this questionnaire during the last 93 years, this is the first time that 0% of the respondents in a group expressed a belief in immortality. Only very few of the respondents indicated they engaged in activities that could be deemed in some way religious, spiritual, or contemplative. Suggested further research would question whether or not substantial nonverbal differences exist between religious people and scientists. Also, although psychology rests on the presumption that the individual human being exists, this study's respondents found defining the individual to be a complex or impossible task.